The United States has had a health care crisis for years. We’ve gone from a model of the employer and insurance covering most of the costs while providing reasonable coverage to one where the end user is responsible for more and more of the cost through deductibles and caps, while paying more for insurance that covers less. In 2011, 17% of the GDP went towards health care; an average of $8,608 per person. And while the US spends more per capita on health care than anywhere else in the world, we rank 37th as far as quality of health care goes. Add to that the fact that 49 million Americans are uninsured, and it’s obvious to anybody that we have a crisis on our hands.

The ACA was supposedly designed to address this. However, the insurance companies are still calling the tune to a great degree; it’s still a for profit system that puts the emphasis on profit instead of quality.

President Obama apologized to the country for the buggy rollout of the healthcare.gov website. However, that isn’t the apology he should have made. He should have apologized for not putting in place a single payer system, such as practically every other industrialized nation has. An example of what I would have preferred to hear can be found here:

http://www.popularresistance.org/the-obama-apology-that-is-needed/